In 1980 Josip Tito died; by 1991 Yugoslavia--which had been arbitrarily hacked from the Austro-Hungarian empire by the victors after WWI--had fallen apart. Forty-six years after the U.N. charter, the several Peoples finally were free to pursue their rights to "national self-determination". Bizarrely, the UN security council still pledges to preserve the "sovereignty, independence unity and territorial integrity" of equally unnatural countries elsewhere. It is an indefensible policy. Instead of the Beacon of Liberty, the U.S. has signed on as the guarantor of imperial caprice.

Of course the Spanish are afraid of Basque separatists, and the Chinese fear the aspirations of Tibetans and the Turks want to pretend that the Kurds have no legitimate national aspirations and Joseph Kabila wants to claim all the wealth of the Congo. But if the United States has any role in those conflicts, it must be on the side of the oppressed, not the oppressors.

No sane person would advocate jamming the Serbs, Croats and Bosnians back into Yugoslavia and expect them to play nicely together. We should grant the various Peoples of the Congo the same dignity.